Roy flew to from Philadelphia to Seattle with team athletic trainer Jay Jensen on Thursday to receive a second opinion on his strained right hamstring. The consensus out of that meeting was to give Roy a week to recover, then determine a course of action.

Roy's re-evaluation will come on Jan. 28, the same day the team will depart to Houston for a two-game trip against the Rockets (Jan. 29) and Dallas Mavericks (Jan. 30).

Can you give our readers a quick, basic explanation of what it is and why it is supposed to work.

Will Carroll: For anyone that went to college and wasn’t rich, they’re familiar with donating plasma. It’s a similar procedure, but instead of having just the plasma, they leave in the platelets. Platelets are what clots up when you cut, so no one really seems sure about why they help with healing, other than maybe stopping the bleeding internally. There’s a lot of claims with PRP, not a lot of scientific data.

• The voting public, meanwhile, continues to shun Roy in the All-Star voting. I have no problem with Roy not being named an All-Star starter, not with Kobe Bryant playing the same position in the same conference. My problem lies in nine other Western Conference guards, including Tracy "I've played six games this season" McGrady, garnering more votes than Roy. I know, I'm preaching to the choir. Such is life on an underexposed team from a far corner in the Pacific Northwest. Ray Allen has the right idea. At least the coaches know what's what.

Missing only three of Portland's 43 games so far and keeping the Blazers in the hunt for a top-four slot in the West in the face of a steady stream of injuries are reasons enough for Roy to earn a trip to his third consecutive All-Star Game. The statistical production -- 23.1 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.0 assists, despite the losses of Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla and the struggles to integrate newcomer Andre Miller -- makes Roy's invite a must.

Brandon Roy, Portland (26-17)
23.1 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 5.0 APG
Where would the injury-riddled Blazers be without Roy? Certainly not contending in the Northwest Division and for a top-four seed in the West. At 6-foot-6 and a solid 211 points, Roy stands as the classic shooting guard. He's also much more. B-Roy easily slips into the role of distributor when Portland needs a basket, setting up his teammates with a point guard's eye. Even when the Blazers are healthy, Roy is the franchise.

If we care enough about doing right by the players, why not ask people to consider their decision a little more? Take the names off the ballot and just leave five write-in slots to fill either online or in paper. If it’s in paper, just print clearly that anything that’s not legible is not accepted. Yes this creates a large number of ballots for the league to digest — which we’ll get to later — but they should be moving away from paper voting anyways. Online, you just create a system where once a person starts typing in a name, matches come up just like in your internet search bar. You will still get people who type in the first popular names that come to mind, but it’s a little easier to digest curious autonomous choices than nearly automated responses.

Roy is like the chef who puts forth three-star dishes while the kitchen is on fire; the depleted Blazers would be nowhere near contention for home-court advantage if not for him responding with the best performances of his career.

No. That's a projected record that gives as much credibility to the rate of wins and losses accrued in November with Greg Oden around, with Brandon Roy healthy, and without Juwan Howard (when he's not struck down by TB, or whatever Juwan has these days) starting at center. Can they keep this pace up? As much as I respect the stylings of this team's coaching staff, it just doesn't appear in the cards. Don't expect too much of a drop off, though. These Blazers are made of strong stuff.

They've displayed depth and grit while dealing with a spate of injuries that would have decimated most teams. Despite losing centers Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla, Portland steadfastly refuses to pick up the league's slowest pace. The Blazers rank last in both fast-break points and points in the paint, but run the fifth-most-efficient offense by setting up in the half-court and letting proven surgeons like Brandon Roy and Andre Miller develop open jumpers for their teammates, no matter how obscure (Jeff Pendergraph, Dante Cunningham) or ancient (Juwan Howard) they may be. Making the playoffs in the West would be a hell of an accomplishment.

The 2008-09 Blazers missed 205 games due to injury. And that total was seriously inflated, thanks to the 82 contests a mysterious figure known only as “Raef LaFrentz” sat out due to an injured right shoulder.

This season’s Blazers will stand within one missed game of last year’s total after exiting the court tonight at the TD Garden in Boston. Then they will pass it Saturday in Detroit. And by April, Portland will have made last season’s number look immensely miniscule.

Where will the Blazers end up?

Three hundred?

How about 350?

Realistically, anything below 500 is a safe bet, considering centers Oden and Przybilla are out for the season, which will add at least 78 games to Portland’s current total.

Number games aside, though, the fact that the Blazers are a breath away from 200 missed contests with 39 games and more than two months remaining on the NBA schedule is a testament to just how surreal and absurd this season has become.

The Celtics lost 6 of 10 games while Garnett was out, and the key to their struggles has been the third quarter. In those 10 games, they were outscored in the third quarter seven times, including a combined 55-31 in losses to Dallas and Detroit.

The Celtics are coming out flat after halftime. On Monday, they owned a 9-point halftime lead over the Mavericks and were outscored, 34-18; on Wednesday, they led Detroit, 56-48, but were outscored, 21-13.

Earlier in the season, the Celtics would step on the necks of their opponents in the second half, but now they are allowing opponents to gain confidence, and they lack enough steam to retake control of games.

In the eight games Pierce has played since returning from injury (the Celtics are just 3-5 in those games), he's averaged a very productive 20.25 points per game. However, over that same stretch he's averaging just 3.25 points per game in the fourth quarter, meaning 17 of Pierce's 20.25 points have been scored over the course of the first three quarters (84 percent). He's also been held scoreless three times over this stretch (Jan. 11 against Atlanta, Jan. 13 against New Jersey and Wednesday against Detroit). If you want to cut out the New Jersey game because Pierce didn't need to play in the fourth, that's fine by me. If you cut out that game entirely, his scoring average in the fourth quarter over this stretch jumps to 3.71 points per game. Still nothing to write home about.

The Wizards don't have a young building block comparable to Garnett, but they may have to look into starting over, with several Western Conference teams interested in Caron Butler and the Cleveland Cavaliers listing Jamison highly among their trade targets. According to multiple sources, the Wizards have not received viable offers because other teams are expecting a fire sale. One league source said that the Wizards likely won't get equal value in any trade and may have to settle for packages that include expiring contracts and either draft picks or young talent.

"Part of the NBA life is to always look to improve and get the best possible team out there that you can," Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld said. "Those kind of things take care of themselves. Obviously, at the trade deadline there are going to be a lot of opportunities, but we're going to keep our options open and see which direction we want to go in."